Toasty Cats #6

By Magda Boreysza
www.magdaboreysza.com

Despite the title being what it is, this comic contains no cats, toasty or not. It does contain a number of short comics about other animals, some amazingly awesome drawings of monsters, and even a letters page!

Both of the comics in here are entirely silent, and sort of remind me of Masashi Tanaka's Gon series, if the animals in that acted slightly more like humans, and they were drawn in a less realistic way. Wait, I guess these have nothing in common with Gon, except they're both about animals not interacting with humans in any way. (And they're both good.) My comparison skills appear to be rusty.

I went into the first comic somewhat biased against the small, weird looking mammals with huge mouths and entirely too many teeth that star. Why? Because I have clearly been watching too many sci-fi horror films that feature horrible monsters eating people. Wait, what am I saying? That's clearly not possible, you can't have too many of those.

The dog-like creatures in this are, when they have their mouths closed, pretty cute. They live in some sort of forest society, playing with bugs, sleeping down holes, and mourning their dead. The story itself is pretty much just "nature happens", but it's drawn in a really lovely style that somehow manages to combine lots of small details, with a general cartoony style.

The second story is about a fox's life as it waits for a comet to pass by through the sky again. It is a tale of loss and longing, and kind of makes me sad. But, um, it has really nice art?

Both tales in this issue are good, though I hesitate to look for more, as while I enjoyed reading this comic there's definitely a morose feeling throughout, and I'm not sure I want to read more stories like that.